Quotes About Inspiration

Books can be the people we never get to meet, ancestors or far neighbors.

If there is any good in life, in history, in my own past, I invoke it now. I invoke it with all the passion with which I have lived.

I don't think painters have the answers about a painting except the painting itself. Anyway, a painting has to have some kind of mystery to it to make it work.

Then draw everything. Do a hundred drawings a day,' he said fiercely. 'And remember that it's a hellish life.

At first I thought I would study literature. Then, however, I realised I loved true stories even better than imaginary ones.

I wondered if a novel could have the power to make something so strange happen in actuality.

The Persian poet Rumi says, The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want.

The idea of a library full of books, the books full of knowledge, fills me with fear and love and courage and endless wonder.

My father was right: you could make anybody amazing just by insisting they were.

Motivation is the power behind plot.

Now it sprang up again, that little bright flame that had driven her to apply to the Academy in the first place. Danger ignited it - ignited her - the way nothing else could do.

As you read, keep in mind that no author will parallel your beliefs 100 percent, so you must learn to take from each one the ideas that work best for your family.

I always carry the book of Holy Writ...and something to read...

no eyes but mine will read these words. Why, then, the gentle Reader will ask, do I infer his or her existence by addressing her, or him? The answer should be obvious. Art cannot exist in a vacuum. The creative spirit must possess an audience. It is impossible for a writer to do herself justice if she is only talking to herself.

responsible for some of the most

He read it over twenty times and though the darkness that sang on held steady about him, the unhurried words fell bright through his mind, going down golden through deep water, and when one passed another came, ceaselessly, shining.

To each other, they talked at a gallop. Literature turned them on; their ideas flowed, ran back and forth like a current. (The Cousins)

But the books brought me things. This is my point. They made me feel less alone.

And when I'm with you, she said, I feel as if I were stuffed with—oh, with stars.

Her great dead friends did not seem worth reading that night. They always said the same things now—over and over again they said the same things, and nothing new was to be got out of them any more for ever. No doubt they were greater than any one was now, but they had this immense disadvantage, that they were dead. Nothing further was to be expected of them; while of the living, what might one not still expect?

Penso che risulterebbe stancante essere legati per l'eternità al culmine dei momenti più ispirati dei massimi scrittori. Altitudini come quelle sarebbero inadatte a insetti come me. Su questi libri elevati me ne starei aggrappata alla bell'e meglio, con la testa e le ali penzolanti. E forse che anche l'anima non ha voglia, di tanto in tanto, di mettersi in vestaglia?

Wissen Sie, was das für ein Segen ist, die Werke eines Dichters zu lesen, seinen Geist zu kennen, das Beste an ihm, und dabei so entfernt von seiner Heimat, seiner Lebensgeschichte oder seinen Briefen zu leben, dass alles Geschwätz über sein Privatleben und Kritik an seiner Moral nicht zu mir gedrungen ist?

Ruskin's, whose Stones of Venice

Scrap looked up at the pine-tree motionless among stars. Beauty made you love, and love made you beautiful.